A team of researchers at the Max Planck Institute for Chemical Ecology has shown that alcohol in their food increases the production of sex pheromones in males of the fruit fly Drosophila melanogaster making them more attractive to females. Male flies are therefore strongly attracted to alcohol, especially when they are not yet mated. Three different neural circuits in the flies‘ brains control the response when the flies smell alcohol: While two olfactory receptors are responsible for attracting male flies to small amounts of alcohol, a third ensures that excessive amounts have a deterrent effect.